On This Day, Feb. 15, 1946 – Major League Baseball Gets First Female Scout

1946 – Edith Houghton, at age 33, was signed as a baseball scout by the Philadelphia Phillies becoming the first female scout in the major leagues.

There are different accounts about why Houghton got the job. Some say she bowled over the Phillies’ president, Robert Carpenter, with an uncanny grasp of the game. Others mention the scrapbook she brought along, bulging with newspaper clippings documenting her impressive career as a player in the 1920s and ’30s on the women’s national baseball circuit known as the Bloomer Girls league.

Philadelphia sportswriters, bitter at the team’s decade-long swoon at or near the bottom of the standings, said the Phillies had hired her simply because they had nothing to lose.

Named to the Phillies’ scouting corps by owner R. R. M. Carpenter, Jr., after the Second World War, when the Phillies transformed themselves from habitual last-place finishers to 1950 National League champions as the “Whiz Kids,” Houghton signed 15 players but none was able to make the Major Leagues.

She left the team in 1952 and rejoined the Navy, where she served during the Korean and Vietnam wars and retired as a chief petty officer.

1758 – Mustard was advertised for the first time in America.

1764 – The city of St. Louis was established.

1799 – Printed ballots were authorized for use in elections in the state of Pennsylvania.

1842 – Adhesive postage stamps were used for the first time by the City Dispatch Post (Office) in New York City.

1879 – U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes signed a bill that allowed female attorneys to argue cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

1898 – The USS Maine sank when it exploded in Havana Harbor for unknown reasons. More than 260 crew members were killed.

1900 – The British threaten to use natives in their war with the Boers.